All Ralph David Abernathy IV saw was the
football hanging in the air. Everything slowed down like in a movie, the
sounds of the crowd silenced by the moment. High-level athletes often
say they can block out all their surroundings and see just the ball in
situations like this one, but the University of Cincinnati kick returner
had never experienced such a phenomenon until the fourth quarter of the
2011 Liberty Bowl.

Vanderbilt had come back to take the lead
21-17 early in the fourth quarter and kicked off seemingly with the
momentum of the game on its side. That’s when Abernathy caught the ball
on the run at the 10-yard line and brought it forward.

“Most of the time I’m pretty aware of
what’s going on around me,” Abernathy said after a recent practice for
the team’s 2012 bowl game Dec. 27. “It was kind of weird in that
situation. I had a feeling that, right now, I had to take it back for
the team. I just focused on the ball and the task ahead and everything
went quiet and I was locked in.”

Sprinting down the field near his own 40,
Abernathy says he remembered the advice of former coach Kerry Coombs,
who told him the kicker would be diving at his legs around this part of
the field during long returns. Abernathy did a little high step,
avoiding the Vanderbilt kicker just like his coach predicted. From
there, it was open sailing.

Abernathy had been caught from behind
during a long run earlier in the season, but this time he stayed
full-speed the whole the way. As it became obvious to everyone else that
Abernathy was going to score, the ESPN play-by-play announcer excitedly
spit out every single word of his name: “Ralph... David... Abernathy...
the... fourth...”

His mother, Annette, ran up and down the
stadium steps screaming. His grandmother, Juanita, jumped up and down.
Abernathy’s first collegiate touchdown gave the Bearcats a lead they
would not surrender, going on to win the game 31-24.

Such a moment would be special for any
player, but for Abernathy the location made it even more meaningful.
Ralph David Abernathy IV put his name on the map of college football in
Memphis, Tenn., the same city where his grandfather witnessed the
assassination of longtime friend and colleague Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., more than 40 years earlier.

RDA I

The last time Abernathy’s grandmother,
Juanita Jones Abernathy, had been in Memphis prior to last December’s
bowl game was in April 1968. That’s when James Earl Ray assassinated
King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where Juanita’s husband,
Ralph David Abernathy, shared a room with King.

Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was one of Dr.
King’s closest colleagues and friends. They organized the Montgomery Bus
Boycott together in 1955 after Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to move
to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala. Abernathy was a founding member
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and assumed the
presidency of the organization after King’s death. He was arrested a
total of 44 times as he, King and others organized civil rights protests
and marches across the country.

During what ended up being King’s final
speech, on April 3, 1968, King told an audience of striking sanitation
workers in Memphis, “Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in
the world.”

The following day, Abernathy and King
shared a room at the Lorraine Motel that staff referred to as the
“King-Abernathy suite” because the two stayed there so often. King was
shot outside on the balcony, and Abernathy, who was inside the room at
the time, was the first person to get to King, holding him until an
ambulance came. Abernathy was with his dear friend when he died about an
hour later in a Memphis hospital.

The Ralph David Abernathy name today
lives on in the form of Dr. Ralph David Abernathy III (Ralph David
Abernathy Jr. died as an infant) and UC’s emerging star Ralph David
Abernathy IV.

Dr. Abernathy followed in his father’s
footsteps, participating in civil rights protests and later becoming a
minister. He was first arrested at age 9 when he took part in the “mule
train” march in June 1968 and later served as a state senator in
Georgia.

Growing up, Dr. Abernathy played youth
football alongside King’s son, Dexter, until a knee injury during his
senior year of high school ended his career. He went on to college and
later got into politics.

Dr. Abernathy says his father encouraged him and his siblings to forge their own paths in life, not to follow his lead.

“Growing up in my father’s home, he
always allowed us the leeway to choose our own way. I can hear my
father’s words right now, ‘Every tub must sit on its own bottom,’ ” Dr.
Abernathy said during a recent phone conversation from Atlanta, where he
still lives. “They raised us with the understanding that we could not
make it on their life, we had to make our own way in life.”

Dr. Abernathy and his siblings heeded the
advice. Dr. Abernathy’s younger brother, Kwame, is now a lawyer in
Atlanta. His sister Juandalynn is an opera singer in Germany and his
other sister, Donzaleigh, is an actress in Los Angeles, having appeared
in several films and on many TV shows, including most recently TheWalking Dead.

Ralph David Abernathy died in 1990, more
than two years before his first grandchild, UC football player Ralph
David Abernathy IV, was born.

“My father never got the chance to see
Ralph David or Micah, but he longed for a grandson,” Dr. Abernathy says.
“Annette and I didn’t get married until after he died. I thought my
father was smiling down on Ralph David when he got that football and
scored that touchdown (in the Liberty Bowl).”

Said Annette Abernathy: “The entire three
days we were (in Memphis), the ambiance and the spirit of it all was
very, very overpowering.

I think it kind of transported us back into the
’60s. We felt the spirit of the city, the spirit of his grandfather. We
felt the spirit of Martin, just being in the city with the family. For
some of our family members, that was their first time being back in
Memphis since the assassination. That in itself was very overpowering
and emotional in its own right.”

‘A crown and a cross’

There’s no avoiding the Abernathy name in
Atlanta. A large portion of Interstate 20 through the middle of the
city is called the Ralph David Abernathy Freeway. There’s also Abernathy
Road and Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard. And, of course, there’s also
Ralph David Abernathy III and Ralph David Abernathy IV.

There’s no hiding from the family legacy
for 19-year-old Ralph David Abernathy IV. He’s has been aware of his
grandfather’s accomplishments and his family’s role in the civil rights
movement as long as he can remember.

“It’s been like that from day one,” he
says. “As far back as I can remember, I’ve seen pictures of my
grandfather with Martin Luther King and my grandmother telling me
stories about him and Martin Luther King, my father being arrested at a
young age, things like that. I’ve always been aware of the weight of my
name and what I have to carry and what I have to bare. It just makes me a
better person and makes me want to strive to be a better person every
day.”

Abernathy IV says his father always told
the kids that the name is “a crown and a cross,” especially to the son
who carries his grandfather’s full name.

Annette says the Abernathys never thought
of giving their son a name other than the one shared by his father and
grandfather, despite the expectations that might come with it.

“Life can be a challenge if your name is
John Brown, if you’re not doing the right things in life,” Annette says.
“It’s just a part of his makeup and it makes him stronger. When his
father and I leave here, we’re no longer here, Ralph David carries on
this legacy and through him and the other two children, that name will
live forever. They have to know how to handle that and it’s all part of
growing up.”

Annette jokes that she thought about
naming him “Neiman Marcus,” because that’s where she was when she
started going into labor, but she never actually believed he would be
called anything else. Dr. Abernathy concurs:

“There is a blessing that came with
that,” he says. “There wasn’t even any second guessing. This is the
first child born, first grandchild born to this legacy — a male child,
born on Christmas Eve. There wasn’t a thought in my mind that he wasn’t
going to be Ralph David Abernathy IV. In the womb he was Ralph David
Abernathy IV. He was always anointed with that from birth.”

A natural athlete

Abernathy’s father is a storyteller. It
doesn’t matter what you want to talk about, he has an anecdote, and he
loves spinning tales of his son’s athletic feats, as well as his own.
When it comes to his oldest son, he recalls early in his life when the
comic and activist Dick Gregory saw young Ralph David and noticed the
youngster’s balance.

Living in Atlanta, skating wasn’t in
Abernathy’s future. He started playing football in third grade, and
despite also playing basketball and running track, football was his
first love.

By the time he was a junior at the
Westminster School in Atlanta, Abernathy had garnered the attention of
most of the schools in the South, including Georgia, Alabama and Texas.
His senior year, though, Abernathy suffered a high ankle sprain and
missed much of the season. In the end, he had scholarship offers from
only four schools: UC, Ole Miss, Air Force and Navy.

“I think with his size (5-foot-7), some
of the bigger schools, he probably just didn’t fit the mold for those
schools,” says Gerry Romberg, Abernathy’s high school coach. “I know
Coach (Butch) Jones liked what he saw on tape and offered him a
scholarship.”

Abernathy felt the same about the Bearcats, committing to UC without visiting any other schools..

“I came up here and fell in love with
Coach (Butch) Jones and the coaching staff,” Abernathy says. “It had a
different feel. I really fell in love with Cincinnati and the players
that were already committed when I came on my visit. Most of us are
still here. It had a family feel to it.”

Abernathy appeared in all 13 games as a
freshman last year, mostly as a kick returner. He averaged just more
than one carry a game as a running back, but returned 38 kickoffs for
1,034 yards, nearly breaking a return for a touchdown during a game
against Syracuse. Abernathy wasn’t used much on offense that year with
future NFL draft pick Isaiah Pead in the backfield.

That changed in 2012, when Jones vowed to
get the ball in Abernathy’s hands more. In the season-opener against
Pittsburgh, he had five carries for 20 yards and four catches for 71
yards, including two touchdowns. He finished with 114 total yards,
stealing the show on the game shown on ESPN. It was the type of game
that had the TV crew — Rece Davis, Jesse Palmer and former Bengal David
Pollack — calling his name so much, it was easier just to abbreviate it
to “RDA IV.”

This season he teamed with running back
George Winn to give the Bearcats a potent 1-2 punch, with the 210-pound
Winn bringing the power and RDA IV as the change of pace back. Despite
getting fewer carries over the latter half of the season, his 115.9
all-purpose yards per game ranked third in the Big East.

Abernathy’s not sure exactly how he’ll be
used in the Belk Bowl against Duke Dec. 29 by interim coach Steve
Stripling or next year by new coach Tommy Tuberville.

“I’m willing to do whatever’s necessary
to help the team win,” Abernathy says. “Whatever the coaching staff
tells me to do, whatever the new coaching staff tells me to do, it
doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t matter to me what my role is.”

Leading

While his role on the field might be
undecided, his role as a leader of the team has been well defined. When
UC held a press conference to announce Jones’ decision to leave UC for
Tennessee, Athletic Director Whit Babcock wanted two players to join him
at the press conference Dec. 7. Because the Bearcats were looking to
move forward, he wanted the voices to belong to players who, unlike
Jones, would be Bearcats next season. Babcock asked Ryan Koslen, the
associate sports communication director, to pick two players, and the
choice was easy: Abernathy and junior offensive lineman Austen Bujnoch.

Abernathy stood tall before the cameras, delivering a message for a team that refused to be split by circumstances.

“Coach Jones is a great man. I’ll miss
him, but we play for the guys in the locker room with the ‘C’ on their
chests,” Abernathy said. “We play for Cincinnati. It’s time to just move
forward. Change happens. It can either break you or make you. We are
going to choose to let this make us.”

Looking back, Abernathy says he was surprised to be asked to speak for the team.

“I just got up there and spoke from the
heart and how I felt about our situation,” he says. “It was definitely a
humbling experience. It was humbling and an honor for people to think
so highly of me and to think of me like that. There were plenty of
seniors and other leaders.”

It shouldn’t have been such a surprise
that coaches and the school’s media relations staff chose Abernathy —
he’s been in the spotlight for years, and it shows. Abernathy is
comfortable speaking to a camera, and he looks and sounds the part of a
strong leader in front of cameras, reporters and teammates.

“My father has been leading my family
since I’ve been around,” Abernathy says. “Seeing him lead, how he
handles different situations, how he goes about his daily life. It’s
just been an experience being able to watch him.”

His father was impressed with what he saw
from his son, as well. But he wasn’t surprised. Not only did he know
Ralph David could handle the spotlight, he knew he believed what he was
saying — there was a conviction behind his words.

“It’s impressive to me, as a father,” Dr.
Abernathy says. “Ralph believes in his team, he believes in his
teammates. I’m in awe of his belief in them.

“There are times — and Ralph David has
always been like this — he loves his team. Even when they make mistakes,
I can’t talk bad about them in my house. I may come home mad because
the coach didn’t call the right play or the quarterback threw the ball
the wrong way. Ralph David, you can not talk about his team.”

Abernathy was one of the biggest
supporters of quarterback Munchie Legaux, who started the season as the
UC quarterback only to be replaced later in the season.

“There’s a loyalty I have for my
teammates,” Abernathy says. “They’re my brothers. You don’t let anybody
talk bad about your family — not even your family. We’re all going to
make mistakes; we’re all going to make bad decisions. It’s football, not
everything’s going to go right.

“I see them day-to-day. I’m with them in
practice. I know what kind of people they are. Just because someone
makes a mistake, I’m still going to back them 100 percent. I’ve made
plenty of mistakes this year. I’m not without fault, so I’m not going to
let anyone else say anything.”

Making a difference

As long as he can remember, Abernathy has
had two goals: to play in the NFL and to make a difference in his
community, much like those who share his name. Those two, as Abernathy
sees it, can go hand in hand.

“With football, I feel this is my way to
give back. My father gave back by being a state senator; my grandfather
changed the course of history. This is just a way for the Abernathy name
to give back in a different way,” Abernathy says. “Because when you go
into inner-city neighborhoods, you don’t see kids idolizing doctors and
lawyers, you see them looking up to football players, basketball
players, people they can relate to. Those are their idols. That would
give me an avenue to be a role model for them.”

Abernathy is majoring in business and
finance and hopes this knowledge can help him fund his future endeavors,
whatever they may be. And because he’s just shy of his 20th birthday,
Abernathy says he has no idea what the future may hold. He knows he
wants to help, particularly in the African-American community. At the
very least, he wants to listen to the voices of those who have not been
so fortunate, who don’t have the voice or platform to bring light to
their problems. Like his teammates, he believes in those people, in all
people. He’s secure in continuing the legacy of his grandfather, to live
up to the name.

“This is just another step,” Abernathy
says. “I’m just trying to better the legacy. I just don’t want to be the
weak link in the chain.”

Dr. Ralph David Abernathy III has the utmost confidence that his son won’t disappoint.